TEMECULA  The City Council this week approved spending up to $1.8 million to renovate the Temecula Community Center on Pujol Street, a public building that for years has been used to host a free Christmas dinner for Southwest County residents.

The renovation will bring the center, which was last remodeled in 1992 after a fire, up to the state's seismic standards. The work also includes replacing the roof and siding, adding a new entry and making the building more "aesthetically pleasing."

A rendering of what the Temecula Community Center on Pujol Street will look like after the renovation. Courtesy of Williams Architects Inc.

A rendering of what the Temecula Community Center on Pujol Street will look like after the renovation. Courtesy of Williams Architects Inc.

The vote at Tuesday night's meeting was 4-0, with Councilman Chuck Washington absent.

Construction is expected to take around 10 months to complete after the bid is awarded, which will mean a relocation of the annual Christmas dinner.

Buck Kemmis, longtime organizer of the dinner, said Wednesday that the city has reserved the Mary Phillips Senior Center in Old Town for this year's event.

"The city has been all on top of it; we've been preparing for this for 18 months," he said.

Talking about the proposed renovations, Kemmis said the building is "well in need of it" and that the city is working to make the building more useful for its year-round purposes.

Greg Butler, the city's public works director, said Wednesday the documents that will be used by companies to assemble their bids for the work will include an option featuring the installation of a solar panel system that would be placed on a carport structure in the parking lot.

That system could add up to $500,000 to the cost, but Butler said the city has its collective fingers crossed, hoping a company will include that system in its bid and the total cost ends up hitting the $1.8 million sweet spot.

When the city built the parking structure at the Civic Center, the bid for that project came in so much lower than anticipated that the city could afford to include a solar panel system.

"We're hoping something similar happens here," he said.

The solar system could end up providing much of the power used by the building, which would help recoup the upfront investment.

To cover much of the project's price tag, the city moved $1.1 million in federal money that they city had set aside to build a public gymnasium in Old Town.

The city moved the money from the gym project, which sports a price tag of around $4 million, because of it can no longer bank federal grant money.